Amid a storm of rumours about grooming gangs, Amy Fenton receives scores of threats
It was 11pm on Sunday when Amy Fenton realised she needed to leave Barrow-in-Furness – and fast. She woke up her five-year-old, grabbed a few toys and bundled her in the car to flee the Cumbria town she has called home for the last 12 years. A
police officer had called to say they had assessed dozens of threats made against her over the previous few days and thought there was now a credible risk to not just her life but her child’s too.
As chief reporter for the Mail, Barrow’s daily newspaper, Fenton, 35, had made a few enemies over the years. People would usually rather she wasn’t sitting on the press bench when they were found guilty of drink driving or beating their wives. She became hardened to the abuse, even when a local man, Leroy McCarthy, was jailed for 20 weeks in February for threatening to rape her, after she wrote about the Muslim convert’s terrorism conviction for threatening to blow up Furness general hospital.